Why does my computer refuse to accept video cards?

Let me take you through a trip of my several year-long process of trying to find a graphics card this crappy computer will accept (I've yet to find one.)

Around august several years ago when Doom 3 came out I wanted to play it and I realized I had to update my graphics card (playing Doom 3 with a 16 mb graphics card = no fun, as you can imagine.) I believe the first card I tried was a Radeon 9600, ok I put it in the correct slot, turned the computer on and at first everything was fine. But several minutes later the screen went black and the whole graphics display was messed up, had to reboot and I couldn't read anything. Same thing happened when I rebooted, and eventually I had to take out the graphics card. I tried updating the drivers and everything to no use. I made sure my computer "met" the requirements, and it seemed to, so I was clueless.

So, I took it back, tried a nVida GeForce. To be honest I don't remember exactly what GeForce card I bought, but just to make sure I wasn't doing something wrong (even though I was pretty sure I wasn't, it's not that hard) I even took it to a local computer store so they could install it. Well turns out my computer was not compatiable with the type of card, even though I checked to make sure it was the right type ... but I'm like "-__- ok w/e..."

Well more months go by and I figure "OK, third time is the charm" well I buy the Radeon 9550 - I mean hell last time I actually got the computer to turn on with the Radeon (apparently with the nVida one the computer wouldn't even boot up.) I put it into the right slot, update drivers, everything works fine for around 5 hours. I even checked dxdiag and sure enough under "Display" there was the Radeon 9550 so it took. However after 5 hours of having the graphics card in and it working completely fine, my computer screen went black and I had to restart. The graphics for the computer returned to the mangled up mess that I had with the 9600. I thought "Well since it was working for 5 hours maybe it's overheating.." so I turned the computer off for the night but the next morning I turn it on and sure enough, same problem.

Sorry for the long story but perhaps now you understand my frustration and just complete cluelessness as to why nothing seems to work. I mean I'm not an idiot when it comes to computers -- I checked to make sure everything was compatiable (whether the card was PCI/APG, power suply, etc.) but yet they still wouldn't take...

list your computer specs, and you can get a decent motherboard for 65 bucks that has a pci-e slot and a decent grfx card for 100-150 bucks, thats the way i go, please list your system specs, like cpu. mobo, memory, psu, everything

Whats your mainboard? did you update your mainboards BIOS? Also, if its an older AGP based system, it could be to do with the type of AGP port you have, there were several revisions all utilising different voltage specifications, and unless the card met that specification, your graphics card would get fried. For example, you put a 1.5v AGP card in a 3.3v AGP slot, you would kill the card in no time flat. If you put a 3.3v AGP card in a 1.5v AGP slot, either nothing would happen, or you would most probably fry the AGP slot where it was trying to provide more power than it was supposed to.

Well the card you tried is backwards compatable so sounds like a bios update at the least . You didnt list your PSU and you did say all met spec but sounds PSU'ish . Or maybe your mobo is shot and possibly killing graphic cards.

The bad news is I cant find that mobo or chipset combo used on pcchips website. The good news is it seems unlikely a 3.3v AGP slot would of been used on that board as the SiS 730S chipset had AGP 2.0 specification support, which was AGP 4x era. However AGP 4x also did support the 3.3v AGP slot as well as the AGP 1.5v standard of the time. It seems your mainboard also has intergrated graphics as well, enter your bios and check for any options for this and disable it. The final bit of good news is I found what seems to be a rather late revision of the boards bios so should hopefully fix your problems. Due to the age of this board I deffinately wouldnt get anything more expensive than a used 9600XT off ebay. make sure the XT is using BGA memory (little black squares) instead of TSOP memory (rectangular black shapes) though.

The final bit of bad news is TPU zip limits are a bit too small to attach the bios file so if u pm me with ur email ill email u it.